CVE-2025-9164

Published Oct 27, 2025

Last updated 4 months ago

CVSS high 8.8
Docker

Overview

Description
Docker Desktop Installer.exe is vulnerable to DLL hijacking due to insecure DLL search order. The installer searches for required DLLs in the user's Downloads folder before checking system directories, allowing local privilege escalation through malicious DLL placement.This issue affects Docker Desktop: through 4.48.0.
Source
security@docker.com
NVD status
Awaiting Analysis

Risk scores

CVSS 4.0

Type
Secondary
Base score
8.8
Impact score
-
Exploitability score
-
Vector string
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:P/AU:Y/R:U/V:C/RE:X/U:X
Severity
HIGH

Weaknesses

security@docker.com
CWE-427

Social media

Hype score
Not currently trending

  1. CVE-2025-9164 Docker Desktop Installer.exe is vulnerable to DLL hijacking due to insecure DLL search order. The installer searches for required DLLs in the user's Downloads folder be… https://t.co/J1KH9QGkur

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    27 Oct 2025

    259 Impressions

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Related CVEs

  1. Docker Desktop for Windows contains multiple incorrect permission assignment vulnerabilities in the installer's handling of the C:\ProgramData\DockerDesktop directory. The installer creates this directory without proper ownership verification, creating two exploitation scenarios: Scenario 1 (Persistent Attack): If a low-privileged attacker pre-creates C:\ProgramData\DockerDesktop before Docker Desktop installation, the attacker retains ownership of the directory even after the installer applies restrictive ACLs. At any time after installation completes, the attacker can modify the directory ACL (as the owner) and tamper with critical configuration files such as install-settings.json to specify a malicious credentialHelper, causing arbitrary code execution when any user runs Docker Desktop. Scenario 2 (TOCTOU Attack): During installation, there is a time-of-check-time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition between when the installer creates C:\ProgramData\DockerDesktop and when it sets secure ACLs. A low-privileged attacker actively monitoring for the installation can inject malicious files (such as install-settings.json) with attacker-controlled ACLs during this window, achieving the same code execution outcome.•CVE-2025-14740
  2. Docker Desktop diagnostics bundles were found to include expired Hub PATs in log output due to error object serialization. This poses a risk of leaking sensitive information in exported diagnostics, especially when access denied errors occurred.•CVE-2025-13743
  3. Docker Compose trusts the path information embedded in remote OCI compose artifacts. When a layer includes the annotations com.docker.compose.extends or com.docker.compose.envfile, Compose joins the attacker‑supplied value from com.docker.compose.file/com.docker.compose.envfile with its local cache directory and writes the file there. This affects any platform or workflow that resolves remote OCI compose artifacts, Docker Desktop, standalone Compose binaries on Linux, CI/CD runners, cloud dev environments is affected. An attacker can escape the cache directory and overwrite arbitrary files on the machine running docker compose, even if the user only runs read‑only commands such as docker compose config or docker compose ps. This issue is fixed in v2.40.2.•CVE-2025-62725
  4. In a hardened Docker environment, with Enhanced Container Isolation ( ECI https://docs.docker.com/enterprise/security/hardened-desktop/enhanced-container-isolation/ ) enabled, an administrator can utilize the command restrictions feature https://docs.docker.com/enterprise/security/hardened-desktop/enhanced-container-isolation/config/#command-restrictions  to restrict commands that a container with a Docker socket mount may issue on that socket. Due to a software bug, the configuration to restrict commands was ignored when passed to ECI, allowing any command to be executed on the socket. This grants excessive privileges by permitting unrestricted access to powerful Docker commands. The vulnerability affects only Docker Desktop 4.46.0 users that have ECI enabled and are using the Docker socket command restrictions feature. In addition, since ECI restricts mounting the Docker socket into containers by default, it only affects containers which are explicitly allowed by the administrator to mount the Docker socket.•CVE-2025-10657
  5. A vulnerability was identified in Docker Desktop that allows local running Linux containers to access the Docker Engine API via the configured Docker subnet, at 192.168.65.7:2375 by default. This vulnerability occurs with or without Enhanced Container Isolation (ECI) enabled, and with or without the "Expose daemon on tcp://localhost:2375 without TLS" option enabled. This can lead to execution of a wide range of privileged commands to the engine API, including controlling other containers, creating new ones, managing images etc. In some circumstances (e.g. Docker Desktop for Windows with WSL backend) it also allows mounting the host drive with the same privileges as the user running Docker Desktop.•CVE-2025-9074

References

Sources include official advisories and independent security research.